Maps Reveal: Full Circle

Today is the reveal for the quilt generated from the "Maps" prompt. I call my quilt "Full Circle." Here's my finished quilt. 

I've adjusted the brightness and contrast a little to make the thread drawings visible. It requires some explanation, and I've written a rather lengthy quilt tour with stories and pictures on my personal blog. For this post, I've cut the "fluff." If you want to read more about it, please click here for more. 

The prompt had me going off in all directions. I considered road maps, star maps, weather maps, and more. In my online wandering, I came across a term I'd not heard before: "Mind mapping." You can click on that link for more information, but in a nutshell...

"Mind maps provide a structured way to capture and organize ideas and information. They help users to understand concepts by breaking them down into their component parts. The technique is used to develop new ideas, or to break down and better understand existing information. Mind mapping is a powerful technique to help you visually develop and organize ideas and information."

Here is an example in visual form:

With this idea in mind, I remembered a certain fabric in my stash...this one:

I was reminded of a theme central to my self-identify: that of being a Marine Corps brat. From that starting place, the ideas flowed, and I got very excited about making this quilt.

It was an easy concept: Put the Marine Corps fabric in the quilt's center, and then surround it with blocks from the states where I'd lived while growing up. Taking the idea further, I decided to quilt it with "thread drawings" of some of my unique personal memories of each place. 

The center block is the starting point of this mind-mapping exercise. I added three borders to bring it to the size I wanted.

The nomadic lifestyle of the military brat means lots of road trips. And I guess that makes it appropriate for the prompt in a different way. A road trip requires a map, and at the time we were traveling, paper maps were the only choice. I loved that part of our life. The quilting on this block makes me think of tire tracks.

Starting at the top and moving clockwise, the first state represented is my home state of California. The quilt block is called "Road to California." The horse and barn fabric you see there was purchased at a quilt shop in Sonora, California. It was quilted with a simple dot-to-dot motif.

I was only three when we left California for my dad's next duty station. To its right, I quilted the first thread drawing of a dandelion, the official flower of the military brat.

From California, we headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is the state quilt block for New Mexico. The petroglyph fabric you see was purchased at a quilt shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We lived in New Mexico for only a short time, and I have almost no memories of our life there. However, I've been back to Albuquerque several times as an adult. For my thread drawings, I included Kokopelli, representing our visit to nearby Petroglyph National Monument and a hot air balloon representing Albuquerque’s annual balloon festival.

From Albuquerque, we traveled all the way to the Atlantic coast for our next home at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina. This is North Carolina's state block: 

The blue crab fabric you see there in the middle was some I purchased at a quilt shop in Carolina Beach, North Carolina.

My memories of North Carolina are these: Behind our house there was some kind of drainage ditch. There, we could catch polliwogs (or tadpoles, if you like). We'd keep them in mason jars or large bowls until they sprouted legs and turned into tiny frogs, no larger than a kidney bean. (Occasionally, they got loose in the house.) Also, we survived a bad hurricane, Hurricane Donna, in 1960. I'm a born cat lover, and it was the first time I was given a kitten. Here are my thread drawings for North Carolina memories.

After North Carolina, my dad's next post was at The Pentagon, in Washington, D.C. For that, we packed up and moved to Groveton, Virginia. Here is Virginia's state block, the Virginia Reel. 

The ladybug fabric was purchased at a quilt shop in Harrisonburg, Virginia. It was a banner year for ladybugs that year and we had a small infestation in our RV at the time.

Virginia was an interesting and historic place to live. Our family made many visits to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. It was the first time we lived in a place where I awakened to the enchantment of a landscape covered in freshly fallen snow. And it was the one place we lived where I saw fireflies (or lightning bugs, if you prefer). 

From Virginia, we drove back across country to San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean, where we boarded a military ship (the USS Patrick) and crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to my dad's next duty station at Marine Corps Air Station in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii.

While Hawaii has a state block, I liked this "Pineapple Star" better.  I quilted it with plumeria in the corners. I don't have any fabric purchased in Hawaii, so I let the palm trees do the heavy lifting for this block.

I learned to dance the hula and to play the ukelele.

Among my fondest memories was seeing the pineapple fields during a visit with my aunt and uncle. The pineapples had been harvested, and they were doing some "grooming" work in the fields when they came across a pineapple they'd missed. A worker handed it to me, and I'm telling you, it remains to this very day the sweetest, best-tasting pineapple I've ever eaten. It made me a life-long lover of fresh pineapple. I'm still searching for one that tastes as sweet.

And that brings me full circle back to California, where I lived out the remainder of my "brat years."

From Hawaii, we boarded a ship to return to the mainland and my dad's next post at Camp Pendleton, California. There, I attended the remainder of my school years while my dad did three tours in Vietnam, always returning to Camp Pendleton. There, I learned to play the clarinet, and I was a member of our high school band. 

I graduated from the same high school where I met my husband. We exchanged marriage vows, and then moved to Arizona shortly thereafter, bringing my life as a military brat to a close. My quilt was finished with some simple stippling around the open areas where the thread drawings are. I used the same "tire track" motif in the outer border.

Putting it all in context, here is my finished mind-mapped quilt:

Here's how it looks from the back:

It's a little too large to qualify as an "art” quilt. At 48 x 48 inches, it's more lap-sized than wall-sized. I had so much fun making it. I hope you like my quilt.